Shopware Combats Agentic AI Monopoly 🥊

Plus: New llms.txt file boosts AI visibility for online stores 🔎, while Prime Day 2025 breaks records with $24.1B spent 🔥.

July 16, 2025

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Big Tech’s finally facing some resistance to its monopoly—Shopware leads the pushback with its ecommerce avengers! 

Hi there, and welcome to another issue of The Ecom Press 🗞️!

First up, Shopware is rallying the troops to push back against AI monopolies with its new Agentic Alliance. Meanwhile, a proposed file format could quietly become your ticket to AI visibility.

And over on the retail front, Prime Day shattered records yet again 🔥, offering a glimpse into how shoppers are thinking ahead of Q4.

As always, lots to cover. Let’s dive in 🚀

In a rush? Here's the juice🤭:

🥊 Shopware forms alliance to combat agentic AI monopoly.

🔎 New llms.txt file boosts AI visibility for online stores.

🔥 Prime Day 2025 breaks records with $24.1B spent.

📚 Case Study: How Asphalte Collects 4,000+ Leads Every Month

⚡️Worthy Mentions

Source: ChatGPT Image Generator 

In a bold and strategic move to safeguard the future of ecommerce, Shopware has launched the Agentic Commerce Alliance, a coalition of 15 founding partners aimed at protecting merchant autonomy in the face of rapidly advancing AI.

As autonomous AI agents begin dominating how shoppers discover, evaluate, and purchase products, the risk of platforms like Amazon, Google, and OpenAI monopolizing retail interactions is rising. According to Shopware’s CEO, Stefan Hamann, the Alliance is a direct response to that threat, one that could reduce brand identity to a pricing algorithm.

Here’s the lowdown ⬇️:

🧩 Goals of the Alliance:

  • Open Standards for Agentic Commerce: To create interoperable frameworks that let merchants of all sizes participate in agent-to-agent commerce while maintaining control and visibility over how their brand is represented.

  • AI-Driven Differentiation: Use AI to power personalization, immersive shopping (e.g., 3D experiences), and human-like customer service — preserving what makes brands unique.

🌍 A Growing Movement: Although it launched in Europe, the initiative is expected to expand into the U.S. as more merchants face similar risks of being erased from the AI-dominated customer journey.

🛠️ Backed by Industry: The Alliance includes 15 partners across ecommerce and tech. Shopware, which powers over 55,000 merchants, was among the first to integrate OpenAI’s LLMs with its 2022 AI Copilot.

Why it matters 🤷‍♂️

As agentic commerce continues to grow, the future of ecommerce is being shaped by a handful of dominant AI platforms — and not always with merchants in mind, unfortunately. And this alliance is the first serious pushback because if bots are deciding what gets bought and why, the real risk isn’t just losing traffic, but losing identity and presence.

Source: Search Engine Roundtable

A new proposed file format — llms.txt — could soon become the SEO of the AI era. Developed by Fast.ai’s Jeremy Howard, the standard aims to help websites, including ecommerce stores, become more easily found and cited by large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.

Here’s the scoop 🍨:

🧭 What is llms.txt? 

It’s a simple, text-based file (like robots.txt) that websites can add to guide AI tools. It tells them which pages to read, which to skip, and where to find clean, citation-ready summaries in Markdown format. Think: a shortcut for AI agents looking for the most useful, digestible content on your site.

🛒 How relevant is it?

Most ecommerce sites are cluttered with code-heavy product pages, dynamic carts, and layered navigation. llms.txt lets you bypass that by offering stripped-down versions of blog posts, buying guides, or product breakdowns. That is, clean content that the AI can read and recommend with ease.

📁 How it works in practice

Sites can “allow” or “disallow” AI access to parts of their site (e.g., block the checkout page, allow blog or shipping guides). They can also provide links to .md documents containing AI-friendly summaries, with clear titles, product features, intended use cases, and source links.

Why it matters 🤨

AI is changing how people search and shop. Instead of typing into Google, users now ask ChatGPT what product to buy, where to find deals, or how something compares. But LLMs often fumble through messy websites. But llms.txt can give websites a chance to control how their content is seen, summarized, and shared by AI. For ecommerce teams, this could become a quiet but powerful edge in how customers discover and trust your brand going forward.

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🔥 Prime Day 2025 breaks records with $24.1B spent.

Source: Amazon

Prime Day 2025 (July 8–11) was Amazon’s biggest yet, generating a record-breaking $24.1B in U.S. ecommerce sales, according to Adobe — a 30.3% YoY increase, and more than twice the online spend seen during Black Friday 2024. 

Amazon didn’t release exact figures but confirmed record-breaking performance in terms of volume and seller participation. Independent sellers also achieved all-time highs in sales and items sold.

Key insights from Adobe’s data:

📈 Hot categories: Appliances (+112%), office supplies (+105%), electronics (+95%), books (+81%), home improvement (+76%), home and garden (+58%), and baby products (+55%).

📱Mobile shopping dominated with 53.2% share and $12.8B in revenue.

Shoppers took advantage of the longer 4-day window to browse more strategically — click-through rates increased, but conversion rates dropped, as people waited for ideal deals.

🎒 Back-to-school shopping saw a major boost, with:

  • School supplies up 175%

  • Dorm essentials up 84%

🛒 Consumers “traded up” to premium items during the sale:

  • High-end electronics saw a 57% increase

  • Other categories with notable upgrades: appliances (+36%), sporting goods (+30%), furniture (+28%), apparel (+11%)

🛍️ Grocery gets a push: Amazon promoted offline savings through Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh to expand its footprint in the grocery space.

🧠 AI-powered shopping experience: Amazon leaned on AI to personalize product discovery. Alexa+, Rufus, and AI Guides helped streamline the path to checkout. Shoppers using generative AI to browse retail sites rose 3,300% YoY.

Why it matters 🤔

This year’s Prime Day wasn’t just a spending spree but a peek into consumer psychology. Analysts say Prime Day is now a strategic moment for brands to capture new buyers and kickstart loyalty campaigns before Q4. To stay winning, brands will need to start relationships they’ll nurture all the way to the holidays.

🛎️ The Ecom Press Insider

Source: ChatGPT Image Generator

Ecom Fact: In a recent global study of 24,000 shoppers across 24 markets, 70% of consumers said they expect to shop primarily through social media by 2030, bypassing traditional websites altogether. The same research revealed that 7 in 10 shoppers want AI-driven tools, like virtual try-ons and voice search, to help guide their buying decisions (Source: DHL's E-Commerce Trends Report 2025).

Takeaway: As the line between content and commerce disappears, shopping will continue to feel less like a transaction and more like an experience. The future is definitely immersive, intuitive, and increasingly led by consumer expectations.

📚 Case Study: How Asphalte Collects 4,000+ Leads Every Month With Simple Onsite Campaigns 

Asphalte is a French fashion brand that makes bespoke pieces for its customers through pre-orders only, and not mass-production. It’s sustainable and smart, but getting new visitors to understand the concept (and engage) was a challenge.

They needed to 🧗:

  • Grow their email list

  • Get more people to take product surveys

  • Build awareness of their made-on-demand model

The solution ✊?

  • Introduced the brand early: They added a popup that shows up 30 seconds after someone lands on the site. Instead of pushing a product, it simply explains what the brand stands for and invites visitors to help co-create future collections.

  • Tested different popup styles: They ran A/B tests with different designs and messages. One full-screen version that focused attention ended up performing best—click-through rates went from 15% to 25%.

  • Used onsite notifications to guide visitors: They added small, timely messages across the site, pointing to things like product launches, blog posts, stock alerts, and sign-ups. These helped keep visitors engaged without being pushy.

The Results 🚀?

  • 4,000+ new email leads each month

  • 25% CTR on popups (well above average)

  • 42% of revenue came from visitors who clicked notifications

  • Visitors who clicked messages viewed 2.5x more pages

Points to note 📝?

  • Don’t assume people understand your value right away. Take a moment to introduce your brand.

  • Popups work when they’re relevant and well-designed. Always test.

  • Onsite messages can guide users just like a good sales rep would; use them wisely.

⚡️Worthy Mentions

Wrapping up…

Let’s be honest: Shopware trying to rein in Big Tech’s AI grip might be ambitious, but it’s a conversation that had to start 🎯. With AI reshaping everything from product discovery to shopper journeys, staying passive just doesn’t work.

Prime Day was no slouch either, giving us a peek into what Q4 might look like. If you’re not already studying the patterns, you might miss your moment 🎯.

We’ll keep tracking the pulse of ecommerce every week. But until then, make sure you subscribe, if you haven’t already, so you never miss a beat 🔔✨